In a World of Sexy Christmas Photos one Jew Wishes to Tip the Scale For Hanukkah!

You’ve seen them. No, you’ve been flooded with them! “Sexy” Christmas themed photos from every model, actress, and cosplayer posted since late November. You may even remember about 4 years ago I even did a Holiday Elf shoot. This year as Hanukkah began on Christmas Eve (overlapped the season) I wondered “Are there any Jewish models doing any manner of sexy Hanukkah shoots? A quick google search answered: there are few to none. (What!?)

To give you a bit of background on myself, yes, I do celebrate Christmas (not due to religious reasons, I simply enjoy food, Pegan traditions, and presents). I also celebrate and grew up with the Jewish Holidays. By heritage I am half Jewish. As I’ve said before Katz is the last name I was born with (I’m one of the few cosplay gals who uses their true identity) and you’d have trouble finding a Katz who isn’t a Jew in some capacity. (It’s one of the most common Jewish Surnames) Being so far away from my family or other Jewish communities, it’s hard to keep all the traditions alive out here for my family now. I have no one to lead a cedar during Passover, I barely remember all the words for the holiday prayers (I feel like at this point I’m ab-libing a few phrases). Despite this I press on and attempt to keep the holidays going. My grandfather taught me, it’s important to pass down the stories and traditions of our ancestors. My grandfather is still very prominent in the Jewish community and synagogue where he lives (though also an atheist in his beliefs at this point in his life)

What does all this have to do with this photo shoot? Well, I suppose I wanted to make being Jewish a bit more normal. No, no I don’t find it strange, but anytime I mention my heritage I see shock come over people. Most don’t know even the basis of what it means to be Jewish, or the stories behind the Holidays. Why do we all learn the gist of Christmas or Easter but no one learns about any of the Jewish holidays?

Let’s start with Hanukkah (there are a couple ways to spell it but this has always been my favorite). I would write a long drawn out rambling tale on Hanukkah myself but there are plenty of articles already written on the history of it. For those of you too lazy to read the gist of the holiday is about how the Macabees refused to stop being Jewish when ordered to be by the Greeks. Their temple only had enough oil for one night but the miracle of Hanukkah was the menorah burnt for 8 nights (Much like Passover Hanukkah reminds us of a common theme in Jewish history; fighting oppression. Honestly to this day Jews still fight for their religious freedom, and sadly due to many factors the amount of Jews in the world keeps dwindling to less and less (I myself can’t be considered a practicing Jew, though I do celebrate most of the holidays in attempt to keep the traditions alive). I implore everyone to take the time and actually read about the Jewish religion. The most well known holidays Hanukkah may surprise you to not even be one of the major holidays religiously speaking. (It has become one due to how close it falls to Christmas. It would stink to not have something involving gifts and games when all the kids celebrating Christmas do.

Anyway… For those of you who made it this far; here are my sexy Hanukkah photos! (Why am I wearing an R2d2 Suit? Well, I must sheepishly admit it is one of the only outfits I have with blue and white :P)